i spoke too soon. not long after i started playing w/ the template once it was fixed, i discovered that netscape’s interpretation was smugly, inexplicably fucked up. i’d been in a good mood up to that point — that soured it. i deserved it tho really: i should have been working on Murder! rather than my dumbass website. with some effort i forced myself to leave the screen for the page and made an outline and emailed it to the prof, asking for an okay. (desperate for approval? me? go on.) conflicting opinions from my editor of the phoenix, who wants me to write a review of a student production on campus, and the director of said production who would really rather i didn’t. meanwhile i’m sulky b/c i just want to write my review of harry potter.

frustrating/boring stat review session (midterm tomorrow for which i have to miss a film screening that i can’t make up because the films are on 16mm); a semi-cathartic scream w/ sarah k.; and home to miso soup and tempura. the worst thing, hands down, about moving back onto campus will be missing the food my flatmates cook. ah well.

going home this weekend (right? right?) to see ms. mckeown and ms. warner in concert. that will be relaxing. two people whose online journals i checked had private entries today. [“what’s with today today?”] i’ve torn a lot of hair out. i barely notice til i look down and see hair like shrubs growing out of cracks in a wall. i wonder whether other people think i’m weird, constantly tugging at, straightening or curling my hair. i wonder if i would be so fixated if my hair were short or straight. i wonder whether everyone’s kind of tired of skool at this point or whether it just happens to be the folks i spend time w/ and/or read on the net.

thanks to rabi, i finally fixed this page so that it looks the way god intended on netscape. i can’t vouch for the other way-too-sophisticated browsers (opera? what?); i was quite pleased just to see that it worked on the conventional ones.

i don’t recall what inspired it. of course it’s still rough; feel free to advise.

marc suggested the color. i’m sitting w/ him now in his dorm in the lull b/w dinner (for which rob joined us, offering buddha-like advice) and co|motion (ross calls them “commies”: damn catchy and a pun to boot). i spent nearly the whole day w/ ross for the first time in a while, working on our latest Murder! assignment. he surprised me relatively early while i was still in my crazy pajamas. i went to sleep late after one extensive conversation w/ lana and another w/ ben. the latter ended only b/c the batteries on my phone died.

nori suggested, in response to the previous entry, that perhaps she’ll never get married and she doesn’t feel there’s anything wrong w/ that. got me thinking a little. it’s assumed that people factor marriage into their life-plans, if not make marriage their goal. why do countless movies and books end either at or two-steps before the altar? because it’s the pinnacle of achievement? or because nothing interesting happens thereafter?

hmm. do most kids this age (help me out, kids) fantasize about their wedding day? i just realized i never have. for one thing, i don’t look good in white …

oh so much. i’m back at the barn, deposited here by parents who took a cursory look around my apartment and sped off home. we drove all day, making it from my grandparents’ house in manchester back here in about 6 hrs, with stops; they still have another couple hours to go. considering the state we were in when we left i was scared we wouldn’t make it to new york. (my brother lost one of his case logics in packing — he thinks he placed it momentarily atop the car and then forgot about it. he and then the rest of us beachcombed the stretch of street b/w the motel, where he was packing, and my grandparents’ house, for it, to no avail. all his dvds and a number of cds it would give you a heart-attack to mention! i’d cry.)

i had weird-ass dreams tho. the first was that it turned out i was ten years older than i’d realized. amnesia had wiped my memory of giving birth to dan blim (he’s a senior here). in some hazy way, matt rubin was involved and i had definite negative feelings about the whole thing. in the dream i thought, “oh, so that explains it.” in the second dream, my bedroom was converted into an unused room in the top corner of a skool building. quite depressing.

on the more positive sleep front, i bought wonderfully comfortably warm bright red fleece pajamas. my cousin jeff upon seeing me model them called me mrs. claus. my dad compared it to a shador — all i needed was a veil. i think the outfit resembles a sari; clearly it’s up for interpretation. anyway i slept in them the last nite and had no bad dreams.

now i’m back at the barn, alone again, tho i talked to lana for over an hour and then briefly liz. maybe i’ll slip into my pajamas. maybe no harm can come to me in them.

doesn’t take much to make a good day (or should that be, to make a day good?) possible ingredients: leaving your last class pre-break. hearing the foreign study coordinator whisper “you’re in.” lunching w/ stefanie, maria, ben, sorelle, rebecca briefly / sarah k. blocking the hallway saying an extended goodbye. going upstairs to eliz’s room w/ sorelle. laughter. kohlberg chai. reading vagina monologues in sorelle’s room. helping maria make her love mix. watching cat on a hot tin roof w/ lodge 4 girls. saying an extended hello.

i’m sortof in the midst of packing. ma famille should be arriving soon in our new *shudder* SUV. they keep calling and saying it’ll be later. whatever. i hope i can do laundry up in vermont. and that the holiday won’t be stressful.

happy thanksgiving everyone (as sarah c. put it, “happy turkey, or vegan substitute”)

this is courtesy of william and kat:

Full name: ester sarah bloom

Name of school: swarthmore college

How often do you check your email: like five times a day.

Color of eyes: someone once said honey

Hair: auburn. this is very important to me. it makes baby jesus cry when someone dismisses my hair as brown.

Height: 5’1.5″

Zodiac sign: cancer but close enuf to leo that i don’t make any sense (the two are opposites) **is this ridiculous stuff important to me? clearly, yes.

there was more sappy stuff that i edited out but that last i just had to leave in. happy new week, everybody.

happy november 19 geoff, if you’re reading this. happy wednesday-before-thanksgiving, ben, if you’re reading this. gee, what a historically significant week this is for me …

i’m listening to the Girls w/ Guitars mix that lana made me. she and jamie arrived friday nite while ben and i were w/ the maria’s-birthday crowd at harry potter. the experience of seeing the movie was definitely as much fun as the movie itself: in the car or standing in line, i would periodically emit excited, high-pitched noises or clap my hands; either ben or sorelle, depending on who was looking at me at the time, would smile indulgently. everyone was pretty excited and high-pitched actually. i thought the direction was sub-par, some choices awful; but when chris colombus didn’t interfere — let the story tell itself, essentially — it worked. he really would have to strive to ruin something as quality as harry potter. still, they should find a new director for the next ones.

this morning, my girls left, early; ben moved onto the bed which kept me from getting depressed. mariah appeared surprisingly to walk me to my meeting. after that and rehearsal (somehow i’m the nonthreatening, comforting, positive one; i feel like some of the actors don’t really respect me or at least don’t take me too seriously) i hung out w/ elizabeth and her little sister. later after dinner w/ ben and a good co|motion meeting, she (minus the sister), sorelle, and i hung out for another two hours, forgetting the time. i have to remember it now of course — i should sleep — but it’s been such a pleasant weekend i’m loath to slip out of it. hmm. maybe more rereading Goblet of Fire before bed.

don’t have to time to write really. jamie and lana are here and we’re about to run into the city to meet pennbecca for brunch. saw Harry Potter last nite AND it’s benandmine 9-month anniversary. much excitement. must go.

last nite i was so enthralled to return home to a computer in my room that i could use to surf the net that i started playing around w/ webdesign. i was rusty, having not touched the stuff since september, and before i knew it three hours had passed. the evidence doesn’t reflect the time put into it, i know, but i was just getting reacclimated.

following that, ross recruited becca and me to work on the invitations for the party sat. nite. after all the disagreements and ruffled fur got smoothed, we ended up using two pictures: one of me kissing the blow-up doll annie got me for my birthday, and another of rebecca and joel posing the toy liz got me for the same occasion. (well, technically, for lonlier occasions than those, but whatever.) the caption reads “life is lonely at the barn …”

it’s pretty funny, i think it looks good, and last nite we were up til three printing them out, writing names — i must have addressed 25 or so to people i wouldn’t recognize and more to a lot of folks i would only smile to in passing. it kept striking me how funny it is to be sending bizarre photos of yrself to strangers; then again, is it much weirder than allowing those same folks to read about yr life in a webjournal? — putting stickers and cute messages on them. this morning ross and i rose early to stuff mailboxes before class. talk about initiative.

bottom line: it’s been a lovely day so far. i could even presume to say, perhaps, the beginning of a lovely weekend.

so the way that i found out today that i got into my copenhagen program was that DIS sent a like-five page long email about how they’re going to keep us safe abroad. they want to put my parents and any friends i choose on an email list so that they (parents, friends) can get their mailboxes filled w/ assurances of my welfare or w/ updates on my condition if i’m somehow kidnapped by retaliatory taliban forces and held hostage. or something. i don’t know, denmark seems like a safe country to me. it would be a long, cold crawl for vindictive middleeasterners and what would they make that trek for: to see tivoli?

i’m kinda thinking i’ll have less to worry about there than i would here in the US. is that naive?